RouteScene’s LidarPod
4. The Market for Integration is Growing
There are a fair number of affordable sensors coming on the market these days—but that doesn’t mean they’re a snap to integrate into a system.
Let’s say, for instance, that you’ve picked out a small LiDAR sensor to mount on a UAV, and you’ve chosen a sensor that is accurate enough for your application. Which GPS system are you going to use? How do you decide what IMU to buy? Are you going to include on-board processing? Are you going to mount a battery on there, too? What about a case? There’s a lot to think about.
Lucky for us, the market for integrated systems is starting to produce more than mobile mapping and aerial mapping rigs.
At ILMF, I saw a few different vendors that had built a full integrated system around a specific LiDAR sensor. Each one built the system—including an IMU, battery, case, and GPS as necessary—for a specific use, like handheld indoor mapping, UAV mapping, and so on. You could even say they “tuned” it for a particular customer. If you doubt the marketability of integrated systems, know this: I tried to interview these vendors on video, but I never seemed to catch them at a time when there weren’t already customers in the booth.